Skyrim : Here’s How Multiple Followers Console Command Works

Followers are an important aspect of Skyrim’s gameplay. They can make your questing experience easier, carry your equipment, and perform several tasks based on their range of skills and abilities. There are instances in which having a follower in Skyrim can be infuriating, like when they get stuck, lost, and pull every single enemy in the room. But overall, we can’t imagine playing Skyrim without them, and sometimes we wish we could have more!  With console commands, almost anything is possible in Skyrim, and now it’s time to analyze whether we can have multiple followers through console commands. In today’s guide, we’re going to explain several follower-related console commands, so if you’re interested, keep reading!

How many followers can you have in Skyrim? 

You can have one humanoid follower in Skyrim and one animal follower. It’s also important to make a distinction between temporary followers and permanent followers, as well as animal followers.

Temporary followers are a part of a specific quest and will follow you depending on the quest stage you are at. Temporary followers cannot be recruited through ordinary means. They simply follow you until you reach the specific quest stage. Temporary followers will not give you access to their inventory and are, in most cases, marked as “essential,” meaning they cannot die, well, as long as the quest is active, that is. One example of a temporary follower is Chief Yamarz that follows you during the quest “The Cursed Tribe”. 

Permanent followers are a group of followers that can be recruited at any time. Most of the followers will require you to complete some kind of quest to win their favors or belong to the faction of mercenaries that you can hire all across Tamriel. All permanent followers will give you access to their inventories; some are essential while many are not, and in general, you can order them around a lot more than you can do with temporary followers. Some examples of permanent followers are, of course, Lydia, your housecarl, and Serana, added with the Dawnguard DLC.

The third group of possible followers are animals. You can recruit friendly animals such as armored trolls, huskies, and Death Hounds added with Dawnguard to fight by your side. 

Even though you can have only one humanoid follower and one animal follower at a time (a total of 2 followers), there are exceptions where one temporary follower can join you and your two permanent followers. That means it’s technically possible to have more than two followers, but those instances are not permanent states and will end as soon as the quest for your temporary follower is complete. 

Is obtaining multiple followers in Skyrim through console commands possible?

It’s not possible to obtain multiple followers in Skyrim through console commands. The console command that is usually mentioned in such context – set playerfollowercount to <qty> or set playeranimalcount to <qty>  is not used to obtain multiple followers, it’s used to debug and reset your follower count in case something goes wrong. For example, setting my player follower count to 100 will not allow me to recruit 100 followers at the same time; it will only trick the game into believing I already have 100 active followers who follow me. 

The same goes for animal followers as well, set playeranimalcount to 100 will not make it possible to recruit one hundred armored trolls, the game will only think you already have that many animals following you. 

What is the console command to increase the follower limit?

Unfortunately, you cannot use console commands in Skyrim to increase your follower limit, but there are some mods at your disposal. Such as Simple multiple followers mod that allows you to recruit up to 10 humanoid followers and up to 10 animal followers, you can download the mod on this link.

How many followers can you obtain through console commands?

While you cannot increase your follower limit through console commands, there is a way to “transform” regular non-follower NPCs into regular followers. You can add them to the follower faction by using addfac/addtofaction <0005C84D>  command. In theory, any NPC can be added to your follower faction. This command adds necessary dialogue options to the NPCs. Let’s test this command on one random NPC that we know for a fact cannot be recruited as a follower – Alvor, a blacksmith from Riverwood

1. Approach Alvor
2. Open your console with “~” and click on Alvor
3. type setrelationshiprank player 3 (this is needed since your followers need to be considered your allies) 
4. type addtofaction 0005C84D 1
5. Exit the console, if you’ve done everything correctly, Alvor should have follower dialogue options. 
6. Avoid using this command on NPC involved in numerous quests since it might break them and make your game unplayable. 

If something does go wrong, I recommend resetting your followers and their AI by using appropriate NPC commands. 

And that’s pretty much it; we’ve covered everything there is when it comes to followers and console commands. You can see that it’s not possible to increase the game’s follower limit without mods.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!